Studying the Pre-Industrial to Present-Day Effective Radiative Forcing from Wildfire Emissions Using EC-Earth

Mourgela, Rafaila - Nikola; Rosu, Iulian-Alin; Boleti, Eirini; Petrakis, Manolis; Seiradakis, Konstantinos; Gkouvousis, Angelos; Le Sager, Philippe; Wyser, Klaus; Zhang, Bingqing; Liu, Pengfei; Voulgarakis, Apostolos

doi:10.3390/eesp2025035023

Studying the Pre-Industrial to Present-Day Effective Radiative Forcing from Wildfire Emissions Using EC-Earth

Mourgela, Rafaila - Nikola; Rosu, Iulian-Alin; Boleti, Eirini; Petrakis, Manolis; Seiradakis, Konstantinos; Gkouvousis, Angelos; Le Sager, Philippe; Wyser, Klaus; Zhang, Bingqing; Liu, Pengfei; Voulgarakis, Apostolos

Publisher: Zenodo
DOI: 10.3390/eesp2025035023
Repository: zenodo.org
Language: en

Abstract

The current study focuses on the effective radiative forcing (ERF) of present-day wildfire emissions relative to pre-industrial times. Atmosphere-only simulations were performed using EC-Earth3 (EC-Earth3-AerChem configuration - FORCes branch [1-2]), and three wildfire-emission datasets were introduced: BB4CMIP6 [3] and two reconstructed alternatives [4], one derived from the BB4CMIP6 dataset and one derived from the fire model LPJ-LMfire. This repository contains the model output and the Python script used to produce the maps presented in the study conducted by Mourgela et al. (2025) [5]. References [1] Döscher et al. (2022) The EC-Earth3 Earth system model for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6. Geosci Model Dev 15:2973–3020. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2973-2022 [2] van Noije et al. (2021) EC-Earth3-AerChem: a global climate model with interactive aerosols and atmospheric chemistry participating in CMIP6. Geosci Model Dev 14:5637–5668. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-5637-2021 [3] van Marle et al. (2017) Historic Global Biomass Burning Emissions for CMIP6 (BB4CMIP) Based on Merging Satellite Observations with Proxies and Fire Models (1750–2015). Geosci Model Dev 10: 3329–3357. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-3329-2017 [4] Zhang et al. (2024) Improved Biomass Burning Emissions from 1750 to 2010 Using Ice Core Records and Inverse Modeling. Nat Commun 15:3651. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47864-7 [5] Mourgela et al. (2025). Studying the Pre-Industrial to Present-Day Effective Radiative Forcing from Wildfire Emissions Using EC-Earth. Environmental and Earth Sciences Proceedings, 35(1), 23. https://doi.org/10.3390/eesp2025035023

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(a) (b) (c) (d) Figure S1. Spatial distribution of the change in (a) Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) at 550nm, (b) Tropospheric Ozone (O3) column (DU), (c) Total Cloud Cover (%), and (d) Surface Albedo caused by the present-day wildfire emissions compared to the corresponding pre-industrial era. The maps depict the difference between the 10-year mean of the preindustrial simulations and the 10-year mean of the present-day simulations. Black hatching denotes that the change is significant at the 0.05 level.